WAY OT: MGoBlog ad

The lowermybills.com ad comes up on the left side of the blog ... has the picture of the smiling blonde girl.. i know this girl and the picture is from her facebook profile.. so i ask can someone just snatch your pic and use it on a ad ? because im certain she did not give permission

I am pretty sure you cannot use someone's "likeness" without their express permission. Of course, the real questions is whether she has been damaged in any way that would give rise to a lawsuit. I would guess that she might have a claim but that she would be unable to prove any damages. The best thing to do would be to contact the company and demand that they remove her likeness from their ads.

terms that they have the right to "sell" your pictures for use in other people's ads. It may just be an uncheck the box thing with FB as well. Either way, your friend should email the lowermybills and facebook people and ask for it to be removed.

I had a friend post some of her photography from her studio on her facebook page and they snatched one of her shots. It ended up in an ad for some going back to school ad. She learned that lesson hard because she cant really sell that image anymore.

photographers shouldn't post their work on facebook. Ever. Post it on your own website and post only links on facebook. Why photographers trust facebook with crucial business assets like photographs is beyond me.

The browser is using your cached history on your comouter to display ads for items it thinks you'd be interested in purchasing. For example, I was looking at a new pair of shoes, so I am bombarded with shoe ads from buy.com and shoe.com (or something like that).

Could be you are the only one who sees that picture. I could also be way off base. Either way, don't think it's legal.

... my guess is that the creatives (using the term loosely) who did the LowerMyBills ad-- they may have been in house or cheap subcontractor-- just pulled your friend's picture because it didn't cost them anything to use. It's possible it was an honest mistake b/c sometimes unlicensed images show up on free stock photo sites and are tagged as "public domain." But most likely they knew it wasn't licensed and just didn't give a crap b/c people rarely complain.

Facebook's privacy policy is purposefully Inception-esque but, despite retaining some right to use material posted, they don't have any history of taking user's material and selling/renting to other companies. The one exception to this comes within Facebook's pages, where they will stick your friends' (who don't have privacy settings properly adjusted) photos in ads directed at you like: "These friends have all signed up for free lobotomies-- don't get left out of the fun!"

My advice is to have your friend contact LowerMyBills and explain the situ. They should resolve it ASAP. If they don't, get a lawyer and make some money of the pricks.

There is a really easy way to prevent this... don't post public pictures of yourself on the internet. pow.

If I ruled the world, people dumb enough to put a picture of themselves in a public domain like that would get what they deserve, like their pic being posted in a random ad without their permission. But I don't, and she will probably win a lawsuit.